This invention relates to methods and devices for providing therapy to treat certain symptoms of brain lesions, and more particularly to methods and devices for treating unilateral neglect, a disorder manifested by a failure to respond or orient to stimuli presented contralateral to a brain lesion.
Unilateral neglect can have a global impact on the functioning of an individual, affecting work, play, leisure and self-care. A brain lesion that results in unilateral neglect may occur on either side of the brain, affecting a patient's responses to the opposite field of view. For example, a lesion on the right side of a person's brain may cause a failure to recognize the left side of a person's body and objects positioned to the left side of the person within the environment. Functional ability may be affected, in that such a person may also eat food only from the right side of a plate and comb his hair and brush his teeth only on the right side. Objects to the left side of the affected person may be ignored to such an extent that lie walks into and collides with them, and the afflicted person may also appear to be inattentive to people entering the room at his left. Completion of a task that requires exploration of the left side of his field of view would prove to be quite difficult. Of course, if the lesion is on the left side of the affected person's brain, objects to the right of the person, rather than to the left, would be subject to neglect. This type of neglect is not itself caused by a defect in a patient's field of view, but rather is independent of any such defects.
Computer-aided treatment of human medical conditions is not, in itself, new. For example, a method for treating certain specific medical conditions using a microprocessor-based video game is described in Brown, U.S. Pat. No. 5,678,571. Brown discloses a method of treating a medical condition in a human patient, including the steps of choosing a psychological strategy for treating the medical condition, encoding electronic instructions for an interactive video game in such a way that the interactive video game implements the psychological strategy, loading the electronic instructions into a microprocessor-based unit equipped with a display for displaying the interactive video game and with a patient input device for receiving responses to the interactive video game from the human patient. The video game can also contain instructions for a scoring procedure to quantitatively analyze the medical condition of the human patient. However, the '571 patent is specifically directed at certain disorders and conditions, such as smoking, growth disorder, diabetes, asthma, eating disorder, and depression, rather than right or left side visual neglect.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,828,943, also to Brown, discloses a medical use for video games. However, the disclosure of this patent is directed specifically to an apparatus and methods for the diagnostic assessment of psychological conditions and not to their treatment. In addition, no treatment of visual neglect is shown or contemplated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,671 to Geeslin et al. is directed to the use of an automated cognitive rehabilitation system and method for treating brain injured patients. It also discloses the use of a computer network to remotely treat a plurality of patients, to modify levels of difficulty, and to compile results. However, it does not disclose a method for treating visual neglect in a brain injury patient.